Are you prepared for the worst?
165: Domestic, financial, and societal crises management
Welcome back everyone - hope those of you in the US had a nice President’s Day weekend.
If you’re sitting comfy in a warm cubicle wondering how you can get ahead in life after a weekend of debauchery — this post is for you.
With everything going on in the world and the United States at the moment, we’ve been getting more and more requests to cover some of the steps we take towards being prepared and equipped for the immediate and near term future. Given our primary focus is financial markets and geopolitics we are happy to expand on the concepts folks are asking us about amid all of these high profile national security risks, disasters, and macro threats.
Our post schedule this week will be the following:
Tuesday (Today) - Contingency Plans for 2023
Thursday - Crypto Market Update
Today we will cast aside the hardcore prepper’s wet dream of global nuclear war and focus today on the threats we’ve identified here in the United States in the short term. It’s funny some people I talk to when they entertain the possibility of a societal collapse or apocalypse respond with “well I’d rather be dead than have to eat Ramen for weeks, or not have hot water", at that point man just take me out”.
It’s a humorous response that I identify with to some extent but the truth is if and when things get bad enough, something deep within you wakes up and your thirst for survival overrides everything as an animal. We are competitive creatures and when put in dangerous situations, the smartest and best prepared will always come out on top.
What we’re discussing today isn’t some radical or nut-job concept — it’s a straightforward way to look at what is going on in this country and adjust accordingly to maximize your chances of success, health, and longevity.
Isn’t that what we all want?
Many many people are beginning to wake up to the reality of what played out during Covid lockdowns.
People were duped hard. Trust institutions and government is at all an time low.
People also seem to have lost their minds — with wanton crime waves and general social degradation significantly ramping up in the United States.
Don’t believe me?
Check out this absurd murder attempt caught on a bodega security cam that happened last week in New York City.
Bear in mind — Manhattan is one of the most highly regulated gun zones in America. Unless you have a rare pistol permit to protect your wares in a jewelry store or other valuables business, it is a whopping fat felony charge to even have a gun, let alone the SBR (short barreled rifle) that this thug unloaded on the storekeeper the second time he came in.
Is this New York City or a fucking Grand Theft Auto Online Server?
Think about the state of mind someone has to be to just do this casually.
Why do we show this?
Well for starters, we feel it’s important for people to have a real sense of what’s going on the United States.
Due to woke political correctness, attempts to avoid being called or labeled as prejudice or racist, and puzzling legal proceses and rules that are seemingly pro crime, these events are becoming more and more common with each passing day.
Right and wrong doesn’t seem to exist anymore — there’s always some legal implication or confusing undertone where justice eludes what looks like black and white issues.
I can’t be the only one that is observing this and the empirical and anecdotal proof is being disseminated quickly on social media and online.
A number of factors at the moment are contributing to the societal unrest and the future potential for sizeable domestic disruption that we all should be aware of:
Political divisiveness (big election coming up)
Infrastructure issues ( the recent ecological disasters, chemical spills, food processing fires, etc.)
Racial tensions (probably at an all time high)
Inflation/Economic Pain (Market recession, layoffs, cost pressures, Credit card balances have hit a record high of $986 billion in the US)
Wealth inequality
Lack of justice/accountability + soft on crime policies (partially due to Covid lockdowns, law enforcement sentiment nationally,
Almost half of U.S. adults — 46% — think the nation is already in a recession, a recent Morning Consult survey found. Meanwhile, 25% expect a similar downturn within the next year. Credit card debt skyrocketed during the last three months of 2022 as people flocked to spend for the holidays.
You’ll be relieved to hear at the moment that we have the perfect storm for all out social chaos in the US and looming macro threats that haven’t existed since the height of the Cold War.
And as most of you know on the international stage there seems to be a strong push towards policy decisions and actions that result in the highest chance WWIII kicks off.
It’s truly a sight to behold, recent developments inching us closer and closer to an all out multi continent war include:
Nordstream Story (Insinuating the US and CIA blew up Nordstream)
The Chinese Balloon fiasco/other incidents
Russian jets off Alaska
Biden visiting Ukraine unexpectedly (why tf he there and not in East Palestine, Ohio?!
NATO support for Ukraine, China and Iran vowing to support Russia
A new potential Russian spring Offensive (Air power and troops massing near border)
China announcing weapons support for Russia
Big speech coming from Putin
North Korea missile launches this weekend
Point being we have a nice mix of threats here at home and larger ones abroad.
We don’t have control over what the Russians or Chinese do as civilians. We have to hope for the best and pray war doesn’t escalate.
“The next few days will be decisive both for the course of the war in Ukraine and in general for the further devlopment of the world”
—German Foreign Minister on Saturday
But at home there are actionable steps you can take to prepare yourself and family for the worst types of macro and domestic risks we could encounter — because things are getting concerning.
As students of geopolitics, international relations, and history we are always looking to interpret and understand global updates and moves by our enemies in Russia and China but we can’t overlook what we are seeing happen in the United States since that is our home.
As we explained in our last post Are We Under Attack — we’re observing to some extent the US under systematic attack from either foreign adversaries or a combination of compromised domestic actors and parties alongside our enemies overseas.
Everything from foreign agents sabotaging infrastructure to the mere aging of US transportation and infrastructure systems from operational status is possible. We aren’t ruling anything out but as we are typing this out we just saw that a metal manufacturing plant Monday afternoon exploded critically injuring 13 people in Ohio. Weird.
It’s clear the goal if intentional inside the US is division, chaos, and a break down of proper healthy society. It’s entirely possible the US infrastructure and grid is breaking down from years of neglect and under-maintence as well, only making this all worse. But if we combine subversion efforts from China, Russia, along with bad actors here at home we have a large swath of forces all aimed towards weakening the US.
We are confident that this is only going to get worse.
Fortunately you can prepare for the worst easily. It just takes some basic research and initiative to get squared away with the baseline setup.
We’ve outlined for all of you:
A.) A list of comprehensive preps to make sure you have for a variety of situations
B.) Our approach to prepping and recognizing signs things are deteriorating
C.) Our recommended resources from experts on prepping, surviving, and dealing with unexpected disasters, war, act of nature, societal unrest, etc.
This is for young people, old people, corporate workers, work from home types, and more. Everyone can utilize these basic pointers.
This will be our last post on prepping for some time until we deem fit. We’ll cover everything from our preferred physical asset allocation to precautions we take to make sure that even if the power went out or food ran short at the grocery store, we will be squared away and ready to deal with the disruption and potential chaos we will see in society as a result.
Right now as you head to work or sit down for the work day, you’re executing one of the most important pieces to the puzzle right now, which is to stay employed as long as possible, stack cash to fuel asset purchases or businesses, and plot your next moves.
What comes next might not be as easy as a brisk morning commute or clicking through excel sheets for 5 hours a day.